EROTICA: A SURREALISTIC DANCE OF DEATH MADE IN THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC: German expressionism, Unique copy

FIEDLER, Frans. Narre Tod, Mein Spielgesell', ca. 1923. Kunstbildner Frans Fiedler, Text: Thea Giradelli ; Verlag. Der Schönheit, Dresden – A. 24. 10 plates, Folio, 34 cm x 27 cm. Original cloth portfolio.

A weird and wonderful album of life's dance with sex, love and death by the eccentric photographer Franz Fiedler (1885-1956). which shows a nude woman with a skeleton in various erotic poses. The preceding text, tells about death who is a fool and her playmate. A wonderful and in every sense of the world unique album, made against the backdrop of unstable Weimar republic, in which hedonism, sex and fear where indeed intimated companions.

Fiedler won at the 1911 world exhibition in Turin the first prize and had another exhibition in Prague in 1913. He belonged to the circle of Jaroslav Hašek and Egon Erwin Kisch and in 1916 married Erna Hauswald in Dresden where he occupied astudio at Sedanstraße 7. From 1919, he began to work with a 9×12 folding camera and in 1924 became one of the first professional photographers to use a Leica. After expanding his studio in 1925, he took part in the exhibition "Film und Foto" in Stuttgart. The outstanding publication on the city of Dresden, conceived in the spirit of Die Neue Sachlichkeit, is one of the first illustrated works created according to the new principles of photography. It marks a turning point in his work. Fiedler's studio was destroyed on 13 February 1945. All that was left was a box with photographs for exhibition which was deposited with his family in Moravia. After 1945 he did not have his own studio and earned a living in the GDR as author of books on photography. Anneliese Kretschmer, Dortmund, is one of his pupils.

The publication history of this work is as confusing, as interesting. An extensive search yielded only two copies in Germany, no other institutional copies seem to exist worldwide. We searched, OCLC, COPAC and KVK. The collation in the two institutional copies is two leaves and 10 tables. In none of the copies at auction, there is mention of two introductory leaves, there is always only one. However our leaf seems to differ from other copies, that have a more elaborate title page. Our copy seems to be printed in 1923 (See: Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens, Volume 11, p. 469). We assume that this is the sole surviving copy of the book with photogravures, instead of silver gelatine prints.